A fast train with Chinese characteristics

China has more than 10,000 kilometres of operational High Speed Rail line.

7pm TV News NSW

The Chinese built a 2,298km High Speed Rail line in just seven years. In Australia it's estimated to take more than 40 years to complete 1,748km of track. Can that be right, asks Jeffrey Sheehy.

"It's certainly a cracker of a tunnel", Deputy PM Albo remarked when releasing the $20 million feasibility study into High Speed Rail (HSR) along Australia's east coast.

The tunnel he was referring to is the 67km of underground rail needed to access Sydney's CBD. Considering Australia's longest transport tunnel is currently the Airportlink road tunnel in Brisbane (6.7km), Deputy PM Albo's assessment was not just true blue, but spot-on.

These figures offer a sobering comparison with the current global superpower of HSR construction.

Despite only having very limited HSR lines at the start of this century, China now has more than 10,000km of operational HSR line (that is, trains which run above 200km/h).

On Boxing Day last year, the Beijing - Guangzhou line was officially opened. At 2,298km, it is the longest HSR line in the world - coincidentally about 500km longer than the proposed Australian HSR line. But while Australia will take 45 years to complete a shorter line, it took the Chinese seven years to construct a line that is 500km longer.

Can that be right? It will take Australia 38 more years than China to build a 'comparable' HSR line? Apparently so.

The Ministry of Railways has announced China is on course to reach 18,000km of HSR by 2015 - nearly doubling current line distance. This will be the completion of the "backbone" of China's HSR consisting of four north-south lines and four east-west lines in a country with a similar land area to Australia.

Of course there are factors which inhibit a comparison between our countries.

Firstly, Australia's population is less than two per cent of China's, which obviously impacts projected passenger demand.

Secondly, compulsory acquisition of land in Australia is generally subject to "just terms" under the Australian Constitution – Section 51 (xxxi) - and in practice, State Governments offer consultation and compensation schemes, for example Queensland's compulsory land acquisition scheme, despite their inherent power to seize land for public purposes as written, for example, in the NSW Constitution Act 1902 which states that the legislature has power to "make laws for the peace, welfare and good government of NSW", subject only to the Commonwealth of Australia Act.

By contrast, China's railways ministry can afford more of a 'straight-line mentality'. While the Ministry of Railways does offer compensation for affected land users and owners, priority is given to the development of the railway line over individual property rights in a 'take-it-leave-it' approach. For example, here.

Add to this a huge labour force, less stringent planning/environmental processes and ample state capital, and HSR fits nicely into the CCP's economic and social development goals.

For Australia, it's not about usurping property rights or trying to match the Chinese - that is futile. What the Chinese boom demonstrates for us however, is that HSR can be built efficiently and reap enormous benefits for a country.

Labour rights are also an issue of big concern, with reports of lengthy shifts and unreasonable work targets. Workers themselves are devoid of similar western-style workplace rights and are required to work throughout China's harsh seasons. Despite numbering in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions), the rail workers' stories are not heard.

Nonetheless, the benefits of HSR are clearly felt in China. China's immigrant workforce population are as mobile as ever, average citizens are crisscrossing the country every day for leisure, the economy is far more connected than it ever was, incomes are becoming more comparable across the rural/urban divide and HSR has not faced any other major incidents since the lowering of speed limits by 50km/h. Effectively the country has shrunk.

If Australia gives in to vested interests (surely the airlines won't be too happy about HSR…) and loses sight of the long-term benefits of HSR, then the project will surely flop. Informed public debate should occur given the cost and scale of this project, but we need to get out of the three-yearly election cycle mentality, otherwise we'll be left even further behind from our northern neighbours.

Perhaps this need for a mental switch will come to a head when the country needs to decide who will build the railway line. The Government's refusal to allow Huawei to build the NBN comes to mind, but would we let the Chinese, clearly a global superpower of railway construction, build our HSR with the goal of reducing that 38 year construction difference?

Once the proper due diligence is done, it might be the opportunity for us to 'walk the walk' on our Asian Century rhetoric.

Jeffrey Sheehy works for an international law firm with extensive experience in the provision of large infrastructure projects, including power plants, ports and railway, throughout the Asia-Pacific. View his full profile here.